Install Ubuntu On Your PS3 For Vintage Gaming Emulation

It's easy to forget that the PS3 is a fully-equipped PC in your living room attached to your house's best monitor. Installing Ubuntu can help you remember, and play SNES games in the process.

It still kind of surprises me (in a good way) that Sony was, from the start, very OK with PS3 owners tinkering with Linux on their PS3s. A modified release of Yellow Dog Linux was available from the very beginning, and some very handy hard drive partitioning and dual-boot utilities are baked right into the PS3's XMB; Ubuntu gets installed on an entirely separate partition of your PS3's hard disk, so your default system doesn't get touched and switching between Ubuntu and the XMB is a piece of cake.

[Cajun Chicken]

When I install a bigger HDD, come Summer...I might consider this.

[xwabbit]

Ownage ^^. I will be getting a bigger HDD soon. The 500GB Western Digital Scorpio for 120 bucks on tiger direct :P

[Zeevious]

There are free tools to convert your own video's to use the space if your looking to extend it's media use.
http://www.redkawa.com/vide...
http://www.download.com/Koy...
(now at version 1.5, not 1.3 : http://www.koyotesoft.com/i... )

About the only thing you might regret is the automatic, but time consuming lengthy formatting of the drive.

Just think, if it came preformatted the world would be perfect...and how boring that would be!

[prunchess]

I hope some one comes up with an Commodore Amiga emulator for Linux that can be used on the PS3. I've got a big collection of Roms.

[Maddens Raiders]

I just don't understand. After looking at the PS3 and what it offers, why would anyone even consider throwing their hard earned money away on anything else? I guess some people will just buy anything these days, no matter the condition of the economy.

[TheUsedVersion]

If I was you I would get a 7200RPM drive instead of the 5200RPM you mentioned. It would be a wise investment even if you are paying a few extra bucks.

The Seagate above the WD you mentioned is a good choice.

http://www.newegg.com/Produ...

[Rockstar]

I can play nes, snes, Genesis, N64 (not well), PSOne, MAME etc, etc, on my modded Xbox...quite sweet actually. XBMC is sweet as well.

As far as which program to use for ripping movies for use with the PS3 I would suggest using a program to rip the main movie to your computers HDD, I use DVD Fab Platinum (free alternatives include DVD Decrypter and DVD Shrink if you can find them).

The program I use to take those files and turn it into an XVid is called AutoGK...And the best part is this can rip the 5.1 digital audio and it's a free download, highly recommended to those with surround sound.

[uie4rhig]

you cud install a 3.5" HDD which can go up to a recently announced 2TB :)

http://uk.youtube.com/watch...

[Cajun Chicken]

You have great style and choice, I hope an Linux based Amiga Emu exist.

[phosphor112]

USE YELLOW DOG LINUX. It was made specifically to make use of the ps3 architecture. As Zeevious has been saying in the comments. YDL will give you much better results than Ubuntu will. If you have a desktop and you want linux, go ahead use Ubuntu, but for your PS3 just stick to YDL.

Props to Zeevious for being the only one to mention it before me. Also, this article shouldn't have been approved. Not because it's bad, but it just tells you to use something less efficient when there is something that will run a lot better on the PS3, and you can do the same things, if not more on it. Shame on gizmodo for not doing their research.

[prunchess]

Cheers mate. I spent years selling Amiga's and playing the games. I read the article and thought 'WOW i'd love to play Cinemawares' Wings or Turican on my 42" LCD.

If your ever looking for any Amiga ROMS PM me.

[FarEastOrient]

I played World of Warcraft through my PS3 and Azeroth looks so good on a 42" TV!

[Kevin McCallister]

Yeah right. With no access to the GPU, WoW would never even begin to run if you somehow got it working with Wine. Even with GPU access, the game wouldn't run too well due to other limitations in the hardware. I don't even think Wine runs on PPC CPUs. And you definitely didn't get Crysis to run on PS3 as you stated below.

[phosphor112]

You can play WoW on PS3. Link explains.

http://www.joystiq.com/2008...

[Kevin McCallister]

This isn't natively running on the PS3 though. If you wanted, you could play WoW and Crysis on a PSP or your cell phone, but neither of those devices will be doing any real work. FarEastOrient was describing the process below, as if it was actually running on the PS3.

[Jager]

Wow, any idea if i can install PC linux compatible games on the PS3 if i have Ubuntu? wouldnt mind putting BF2 or SC on my ps3 and putting in my Mouse / Keyboard.

[Hallucinate]

no because i the gfx cars is lockdown pretty tight

[krouse93]

i think you can but because of the ram it wont play like it would if you had a game on a linux PC.

[TheUsedVersion]

Like someone above said, access to the GPU is completely restricted. So in other words.... no.

[FarEastOrient]

You have to run an SPE as live, instead of cache data as it does on a PC you need to trick the game into running the data live. You have a core run as a regular processor and than you "force" two SPE to run process RAM in real-time with the RSX as a bus and the GPU as the regular GPU, but you have another SPE running the GPU's data.

Does this work for you? So far I've got to run Crysis, World of Warcraft, and hopefully Starcraft II when that one comes out.

[zep]

YDL is the way to go if you want to play SNES on PS3 well it runs better on YDL as i tried both but i prefer Ubuntu over YDL its just looks so clean and simple :D and thers some windows game you can play like diablo and starcraft need some extra work tho

[Zeevious]

I don't think Ubuntu does, but this was such a thorough guide that anyone could follow, I thought it should be posted.

One of the first things I thought would be great when Linux Support was announced was running emulators like Mame, Sega, SuperNES etc because I really have an appreciation for the history of videogames.

It is amazing today starting an emulator of one of the very first consoles, the Magnavox Odyssey to the classic Atari 2600, then Intellivision, Coleco, NES, NeoGeo, CD32, Playstation Classic & Current, XBox Classic & Current and all the ones I'm sure I've missed in-between . . . and seeing the progression through history of where the whole industry came from a little Brown Box in 1967.

I'd love for someone to round up all the emulators, take a few hundred thousand votes and put together a collection through the past 42 years of history...through all the gaming milestones up to today.

Now THAT would be something...to play through 42 years of time as the history of videogames is created & evolves!

[Hallucinate]

really? it took me about 40secs to format my 500gig..eneded up with 415 gigs though )=

[kosovo]

ohk

[Grandreaper9999]

Haven't used much Linux.. But, I must say, with some tweaking, that logo could actually work.. Hell, it's got the three-theme to it. Wouldn't be straying TOO far from the color scheme from the psx logo either.

[krouse93]

I need a DVD to burn linux on lol.

[Zeevious]

Tons of anything you ever wanted in apps, and it has the advantage of using all 512 Megabytes of memory for improved speed.

The UbuntuPS3 is also great, and the guide will get you up and running playing the classics you own in no time.

Many roms & programs are also released for free, for private use so can be downloaded and enjoyed freely by anyone.

Sega & Nintendo are releasing PSN versions of both classic arcade and console games and those support everything from trophies to unlockable items and even arcade games usable in Home. I've already played the Namco beta, & plan on purchasing both to support more classic releases, both for Linux & the PS3.

[dukadork2]

it just keeps piling up, linux rulez

[blackbeld]

I still can not get wifi for my PS3 with UBUNTU 8.10..... Can somebody help me please?

[Oner]

Easy Blackbeld go with YDL 6.1! ;) But seriously YDL is the definitive version of Linux to use on the PS3. It is made specifically for the PS3 and has "out of the box support" for things like WiFi & DS3.

[dukadork2]

there are numerous resources for YDL, check out:
http://news.softpedia.com/n...
http://www.yellowdog-board....
http://us.fixstars.com/prod...

or just google YDL PS3.
good luck buddy

[Strife Lives]

To install YDL onto a external HDD,and boot it up ?

[Jink]

the PS3 will also have the only good thing that the first XBox had.

PlayStation3 + Emulation = X-Station. As of X meaning infinite possibilities. Just like M$ said for the first XBox.

[outlawlife]

these kind of mods are the ones i find most intriguing

[pixelsword]

I'm not into DLC, so I don't know.

[TomMcBaum]

and I agree that YDL i the way to go. Easier setup, better support for wireless network, PS3 bluetooth, etc., plus support for all 512MB RAM. There are more tutorials specific to PS3 for it, as well. Adding repositories with links to PS3-friendly binaries for MP3 and movie playback and whatnot is pretty much required if you want to install apps beyond those on the DVD. Aside from a slight hassle re-initializing the game controller after booting back to Game OS (apparently caused by the Bluetooth driver), YDL is a breeze. It only takes 10GB -- not too bad if you've swapped in a larger hard drive (which, as anyone who's ever done it knows, is trivially easy as long as you've got the right screwdriver).

[y0haN]

WHY?? Just do it on your Windows or Mac PC, without Linux (unless Linux is your way!). Why do people need to overcomplicate things!